Dissecting Table/Sektor 304 – Utopia/Decay
Oh my, oh my oh my oh my. This is the kind of thing to get the blood boiling, this is perfect if you’d like to blend your mind into a soup. There’s so much to grasp it takes every last sliver of neural tissue in your body torn into ribbons to say you finally get it. Typically, with a split, one or both of the artists in question come together without any concise idea, or, even worse, one shines so much brighter than the other you end up with sun poisoning on only one side of your body. With Utopia/Decay, however, the process is clear; two artists, two different styles, all under the general theme of construction and destruction with a heavy industrial focus. That’s perfect for this context, it’s almost like a symbolic, pulsating creation of metal that swells to life and then devolves, and you’ve got two great acts creating this imagery. Dissecting Table is one of the most well-respected artists in the experimental field who has delivered countless releases over the past thirty years, working primarily under his own label/studio, known as UPD, which has one of the oldest websites on the net. Suffice to say, Ichiro Tsuji is seasoned, and he knows what he’s doing, he basically set the standard for the Japanese underground and few have matched his power. Added to the mix here is Sektor 304, a relatively new industrial act from Portugal, and it serves as the perfect counterpoint in this collaboration of true industrial vision. It’s like a meeting of the minds, or perhaps the ages, youth and experience coming together for one of the most splendid splits to ever destroy the speakers on our old Philco console as the constant battering of metal strikes into our body and clogs our heart with motor oil. This is actually their second meeting together, but my oh my oh my, beat our brains into a pulp and then step in the puddles, please sirs.
Dissecting Table. Yeah, chances are you if you’re reading this you know who he is. If you don’t , welcome to the complete breakdown of all you consider your stability. Few musicians or bands have ever achieved his level of intensity, it’s a complete mastery of all that is noise and industrial in violently chaotic patterns that sound like a claustrophobic nightmare that has never aged, at all. You can pick up something he wrote in 1985 and it’s the same panic attack as we have right here from 2014. Dissecting Table provides the first three tracks on this release, and my God, the power… He uses an incredible amount of sound consisting primarily of multi-layered metallic structures as though Philip Glass grew some balls and went insane inside of an abandoned slaughterhouse. If it were possible to force-fuse industrial with IDM, this is clearly the result. Tsuji’s work is completely dominating in Utopia/Decay. It lays you down on a bandsaw and has you skinned and separated into alligator chum once the needle hits the vinyl. Your mind can do little but sit and take blow by blow as he slowly whittles away at your neurons with a wide variety of fluctuating metallic components. Basically no coming back from this one, spectacular work.
Sektor 304 then brings up the rear on the rest of Utopia/Decay, and at first listen in comparison to Dissecting Table it almost seems an improper selection, until you give it a few more listens, but it’s not a ‘grower’, as they say, it’s more of a perception issue on the part of the listener. Sektor 304 play a classical version of industrial in the style of Test Dept, but the utilization of their selected montage of metallic battering is more deliberate, and without much artificial encroachment. The first difficulty is the shift from Dissecting Table to this, because they provide a more ambient direction with pulses of factory sounds slowly moving together in a dense sound field that’s more lethargic. Eventually they begin to develop quicker beats, but the majority of their sound is stripped to the essentials, taking bare metal and using it as-is instead of allowing it to be manipulated further than its essence. Coming into this half of the work from the absolute frenzy of the first is unsettling, but after a listen you’ll have a clear idea of what it means. Whereas Dissecting Table is the setting up, the initial construction of the metallic structure of Utopia/Decay, Sektor 304 is the taking down, the rust. The factory swarms into life during the first half, and then slowly decays, breaking and splitting into simplicity until only a dark, atmospheric churning finishes off the totality. Dissecting Table definitely surges in this one, and Sektor 304 takes some getting used to in this particular presentation, but in the end it’s a stellar split, well worth it.
Dissecting Table Official Facebook
Written by Stanley Stepanic
Dissecting Table/Sektor 304 – Utopia/Decay
Malignant Records
4.5 / 5
